The Jungle Book’ Is King of the Box Office Again

For the third weekend in a row, The Jungle Book dominated the box office, taking the top spot and making it look easy. It’s been a fairly astonishing run for a movie that felt like a big question mark a few months ago, but this is what the combination of spectacle, strong reviews, and strong word-of-mouth brings you. While this weekend was ultimately all about Jon Favreau’s big-budget take on Rudyard Kipling’s beloved stories, there were a few other new releases. But as you could have guessed, Keanu, Mother’s Day, and Ratchet and Clank didn’t do solid enough business to warrant mention in the headline.

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

1

The Jungle Book

$42,439,000 (-31.0)

$10,502

$252,095,000

2

The Huntsman: Winter’s War

$9,390,000 (-51.7)

$2,470

$33,986,000

3

Keanu

$9,350,000

$3,518

$9,350,000

4

Mother’s Day

$8,302,000

$2,736

$8,302,000

5

Barbershop: The Next Cut

$6,125,000 (-41.8)

$2,652

$44,705,000

6

Zootopia

$5,006,000 (-23.9)

$2,013

$323,518,000

7

Ratchet and Clank

$4,823,000

$1,668

$4,823,000

8

The Boss

$4,250,000 (-31.8)

$1,505

$56,111,000

9

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

$3,810,000 (-30.8)

$1,635

$325,132,000

10

Criminal

$1,325,000 (-57.5)

$840

$13,476,000

Let’s just get The Jungle Book out of the way: in its third weekend, the film dropped only 31 percent, grossed $42 million, and brought its current domestic total to $252 million. Even with Captain America: Civil War arriving in a few days, the path to $300 million will be effortless at this point. Right now, $350 million feels likely the final destination, but the film has been well-liked enough that it wouldn’t be surprising to see it play well into May, so who knows? And while we’re on the subject of Disney movies that feature talking animals voiced by Idris Elba, Zootopia continued to perform well in sixth place, grossing $5 million after a 23 percent drop for a current total of $323 million. Internationally, it’s only a weekend or two away from the $1 billion mark. Both of these movies prove the one unshakable truth about building a successful blockbuster — a good movie that people like will always trump a brilliantly marketed bad movie in the long run.

Now, let’s turn out attention to the week’s new releases. Keanu opened in third place with a disappointing $9 million, which can’t help but feel surprising. The trailer killed, reviews were kind, and R-ratings stopped being a serious roadblock for comedies some years ago. The film is inexpensive enough that it shouldn’t be a disaster by any means, but it’s certainly not going to make Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key into instant movie stars (although they deserve to be).

Meanwhile, Mother’s Day opened in fourth place with just $8 million, a far cry from the $56 million opening of Valentine’s Day in 2010 and below the $13 million opening of New Year’s Eve in 2011. Both of those films braved poor reviews to become hits, but the word around this one has been nothing short of toxic. This will likely be the final holiday-themed rom-com Garry Marshall will direct.

And then we come to Ratchet and Clank, which opened in seventh place with only $4 million. This may come as a surprise to most of you, but it seems that no one in the world knew this movie was actually coming out this weekend.

The rest of the top 10 continued following the trends of earlier weeks. The Huntsman: Winter’s War is still a domestic bomb whose international gross will keep it from being a total disaster. Barbershop: The Next Cut and The Boss are doing fine, if unspectacular business. Criminal is still something of a disaster. And Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is still one of the more intriguing cases of the year — those numbers suggest that it’s a hit, but it won’t come close to the gross of previous Batman movies. Heck, it won’t even make as much as Deadpool in the end.